“How were things at the Witch Central?” Jillian asked him, after familiarizing him with a few important issues that had come to the Office’s attention while he had been gone.
Fortunately there were not many of them, and apparently the staff had been able to competently deal with them, even though Jillian was not the diplomat that Coryn was.
“You look tired,” Jillian added before waiting for a reply.
“I’m exhausted,” Coryn conceded. “Blame it on broken sleep between the long trip and the shorter one.”
He had not done much other than explain his findings to his top staff, and attempt to get some sleep before he had had to go to Ferhil Stones. Before crawling into bed, he had asked Jillian to contact Clarisse on the com he had presented to the greenhood for just that purpose, and the Eldest of the Six had taken it upon herself to arrange the meeting with Marlyss, and the others. She had been efficient; the event had taken place at the first possible opportunity.
“I met with the greenhoods—well, four of them, including the Eldest of the Twelve—and Sarah. The only one who seemed shocked by what I was telling them was Sarah. I suspect that even Marlyss had begun to wonder if there wasn’t a local connection to the problem involving The Organization. As for Sarah, for her it’s her life; her identity has suddenly changed. She’s not who she thought she was.”
“She was already dealing with a lot,” Jillian said, “and this adds to the pile. I certainly sympathize with her. Are you bringing her into the city for a couple of days’ rest, soon?”
“Her rest days from classes are at the beginning of the week. I’ll fetch her then.”
He added a little ruefully:
“I’m going to have to try to get some decent sleep before that. Dealing with her these days can be challenging; she’s prickly as a cactus, although she tries very hard to behave. Sometimes it’s difficult to believe that this is the same young woman whom Steph Clennan and I, and a fleet of Rangers, ferried to Ferhil Stones from the Planet of the Amartos. She was so lively then, and full of zest for life.”
Jillian could hear the longing in her boss’s voice. Was he aware that he was well on his way to having fallen in love with his protégé, she wondered. Surely he knew; the man was an expert in matters sexual, after all. Although it did not necessarily follow that he had any expertise when it came to love; on the contrary, had he not mentioned that the alyens and alyenas almost always left the business once they found someone to love. He had said that it was hard to combine the profession with a love relationship, and usually people new to it were advised to save a good portion of their excellent earnings for the day when they had to give it up. He had been talking about his sex-trade mentor, the woman he had recruited to work for The Agency, on RES, when he had said that. Fiana Marsh, apparently had left her position as the queen of RES’s sex-trade, at about the same time that Coryn had taken on the task of putting together the Kordean-Confederation Liaison Office.
“My fault that she retired,” he had laughed. “I introduced the pilot, Steph Clennan, to her. It never occurred to me that she’d take to that space-rat! But she did, and Steph thought that he had died and gone to heaven! The crazy thing is that they do suit one another; for one thing, she likes his goofy sense of humour—and his brains, of course. Calligans, and she’s half-Calligan, value brains and talent over looks, always; I should know, having seen some of that in my own family. So she’s gone to Mallora with Steph, and the RES operation is in new hands; both Fiana and I made suggestions as to which young ones have what it takes to run the spy business.”
Coryn, too, was thinking about Fiana. It would have been good to open up to his friend, and former colleague. Well, still a colleague; she had said that she intended to find a way to make herself useful to The Agency on Mallora; Organization people were known to frequent that world when they made their clandestine forays into Confederation space. Without doubt, someone in The Agency had already figured out how to use her charm and communication skills to draw out information from suspicious folk, even if pillow talk was out.
“Damn, I wish I could talk to Fiana,” he muttered as he ate the lonely meal that he had found prepared for him, before dropping into the bed which he never shared with anyone, these days. “I could always count on her to talk sense, and help me see the big picture. But I can’t speak of this stuff over the communicators—you never know who’s listening in, and I wouldn’t trust Mallora to not crawl with Organization sympathizers. I should have made a detour there on my way back from Earth, but I felt pressed for time. But was I?
“I’m not thinking clearly; I have to get some sleep.”
*****
Sarah expressed a desire to go shopping for presents during her two days in Trahea. She wanted to buy something to send to Maris for the new baby, as well as small tokens of appreciation to her mother, her grandparents, and the sister whose existence had kept her safe many years ago.
“Though I’m a pretty hopeless shopper,” she confided to Coryn in the flyer, enroute to the city. “I’m going to have to find something thoroughly Kordean for the baby, and for Maris; that’s the only way I can see myself giving them anything that Maris might appreciate. She always said that I was hopeless at picking out stuff.”
“I’ll ask Jillian to take you,” Coryn replied. “She, I believe is an accomplished shopper, and knows which merchants in the Trade City have the best deals. I think that her husband, Joe, is off duty from the Port, the next couple of days; maybe he’ll go along. He’s a big guy, and can handle a stunner with the best. If you and Jillian end up wandering all the way into Trahea proper, a bodyguard might be a good idea.”
“Hm. Joe’s a space ship mechanic; maybe he’ll be up for some small-talk.”
There was something of the old Sarah in her eyes as she grinned mischievously at Coryn:
“Foisting me on your staff, are you? Don’t want to go shopping yourself?”
“I’m a lousy shopper,” he replied lightly, even as his heart did a lurch. “Maris would loathe whatever I’d help you choose.”
“Plus you have several dozen things waiting to be done,” Sarah added. “Isn’t that what you always tell me when I clamour for your company?
“And don’t think for a minute that I believe any nonsense about you being a lousy shopper, you, ex-dandy from RES. But I’ll let you get away with that if you agree to tell me all about my family, and your trip to Earth, later, in some noisy tavern in the Trade City. Maybe Jillian and Joe will come along, if there’s dancing in the bar—Jill mentioned once that she loves to dance.”
“We’ll put that on our to-do list for tomorrow,” Coryn promised. “After the shopping trip.”
This actually sounded healthy, he figured. Sarah wanted to go out like a normal young woman. Having Jillian and Joe with them would be excellent—perhaps they could include another staff member or two in the outing, as well. He did not want anyone to suppose that he was plying his protégé with drink in order to take advantage of her! As if he would ever try to seduce Sarah!
He gave his head a slight shake. Who in the Trade City did he think would be paying them any attention anyway?
*****
The apartment building in which The Official Residence was located was one of those that had, long ago, been built next to the Space Port to provide living quarters for the Port staff. The buildings had never been full, since non-Kordeans were not easy to lure to, or keep on the planet, and the local workers preferred to live in Trahea proper, no matter how shabby their homes there might be. Thus Coryn did not worry about the fact that he had a ridiculous amount of living space, mostly just for himself. He would have been happy in the smallest unit of the building he was in—it was large compared to the Space Station flat that he had called home on RES. Perhaps, someday, he would have the occasion to host one of the galas which diplomats, apparently, at least on more hospitable planets, were supposed to be famous for. Or, perhaps, important visitors from off-planet would arrive, to make u
se of one or more of the guest rooms.
In the meantime, Sarah slept in one of the bedrooms whenever she came into town. Two permanent house staffers took care of the cooking and the cleaning with an efficiency which sometimes had Coryn shaking his head.
On RES he had had to look after himself—with the help of machines, certainly, but he still had had to pick up after himself, and look after his laundry. Food preparation had been simple; there had been a central kitchen from which he could order meals at any time, delivered to his quarters via an ingenious pneumatic tube system. For house cleaning he had subscribed to a service which sent in bots to sweep and scrub regularly. Nevertheless, he had had to give such things attention, occasionally; now they got done before he even noticed that they needed doing.
“I love this place,” Sarah said, as she almost always did on arrival to the Official Residence. “I get to chat with the help, not just make terse requests like the practice is at Ferhil Stones. And I get to sleep in a big bed in a large room; the student cubicles at Ferhil Stones are not any bigger than the shoe box that I lived in when I was a ship mechanic on Space Station XER.
“Dili, is there something to eat in the kitchen, before I go try to sleep?”
“I prepared plates for you both,” said the motherly-looking Kordean woman who was donning a hooded garment in order to go outdoors. “Just heat them up in that queer oven that works so quickly. You do know where everything is, by now, right?”
“You better be off, Dili, you want to get home before the heat gets bad,” Coryn said solicitously, holding the door open for the maid while Sarah pranced into the kitchen. “Curt is long gone, I presume?”
“Yeah. He’ll be the first one back tonight,” Dili replied, looking pleased at the attention from her employer. “And I’ll be fine on the way home, Mr. Coryn. Do not worry yourself about me.”
Dili and Curt had been somewhat taken aback, when they had first started working at The Official Residence, by the relaxed treatment which they received from the Liaison Officer and his regular guest. When Coryn had asked, tactfully, if he was making them uncomfortable, Curt had said that he had heard from the people he knew who worked at the Port, that the off-worlders were not formal in their dealings with the folk of lesser stature, but that he and Dili had not realized that the easy attitude extended to house servants. Kordeans who could afford to keep servants liked their help to do their work while remaining invisible, if that was possible, he had added, drawing a gale of laughter from the Liaison Officer.
“I’m sorry,” he had said, after his bout of mirth, “but isn’t that asking a rather lot of human beings? You can’t get your work done without being present, can you?”
“Oh, I’ve worked for those who can stare right through you, never acknowledging you’re there, except if what they want done isn’t done,” Dili had said with a sniff. “It really did seem that they were blind to my presence.”
Coryn had made it clear that, unless he was distracted for some reason, and therefore blind to everyone around him, the servants were going to be going about their duties in full view, whenever he was around. But the incident had alerted the Agent portion of his brain. How easy was it to infiltrate a Kordean household, one well-to-do enough to have household help? What about the Witch Strongholds; Ferhil Stones had crawled with servants, male and female, when he had spent a short time there, accompanying the comatose Sarah?
When he had put the question to Sarah, during her first visit to the Official Residence, she had burst into an annoyed tirade about the social stratifications present in Kordean society, at the pinnacle of which were the Twelve Witches of the largest Circle.
“It drives me crazy!” she had said. “I never know who I’m allowed to talk to! If I need a servant to do something for me, I’m not supposed to say please, and thank you! Just say enough to make my needs known, and then pretend that the human being in front of me doesn’t exist, that some invisible hands are doing for me what I asked for!”
“But, what I want to know is,” Coryn had interrupted her torrent of words, “could one of these ‘invisible people’ spy on what the august ladies are about? Could a Stronghold be infiltrated by an operative who insinuated him- or herself into its daily routine by working as a servant?”
Sarah had stopped to think about that. Finally she had shaken her head.
“A person like that might be able to snoop on the Apprentices,” she had answered. “It wouldn’t work on the greenhoods, though. They know how to be—I am learning the trick of it myself—always, aware of every human—and non-human, meaning animals and plants—presence in their vicinity. And before every meeting, and every Circle session, before they do anything, the Witches scan the earshot, shall we call it? Any servant who consistently violated their privacy would be sent packing, pronto, in spite of the fact that the class he or she belongs to is deemed invisible.”
Coryn had accepted her expertise on the issue.
“Once you learn the trick of that awareness,” he had said with a wry grin, “please give me a demonstration sometime. I’d like to hear what people say when they realize that you have ‘eyes in the back of your head’!”
“Yeah, just like mothers would claim that they had,” Sarah had laughed. “Remember what a thrill it was when you realized that your mom had been bluffing all along?”
*****
Jillian was delighted with the opportunity to spend paid time shopping with Sarah. The gig grew even better when Coryn asked her if Joe would like to moonlight as their bodyguard.
“I must be in the big leagues, now,” she laughed. “I get paid to do what I like to do anyway, and Joe gets paid to accompany Sarah and me.”
“Such are the perks of being willing to work on a world which most sane people in the Confederation choose to avoid,” Coryn responded with a grin. “On that note, both you and Joe better make sure that you have stunners with you. The Trade City is bad enough with its drug dens, but Trahea of the locals is not necessarily very welcoming to outsiders. And Sarah said that she wants something ‘truly Kordean’ to send to her sister and her baby. I asked Dili to suggest a shop or two, and the ones she mentioned are well beyond the Trade City. It’ll be a bit of a walk, getting there.”
“Hey, why don’t I go along, too, as a guide,” suggested Texi, who had overheard the conversation from behind the desk where he had been making a half-hearted attempt to interest himself in the ‘paperwork’ which had been assigned to him, as his piloting and mechanical skills had not been needed this work shift. “I know the streets of this city, believe me. And, armed with a stunner, I can turn into a bodyguard at a second’s notice.”
“That’s an excellent idea,” Coryn agreed immediately.
He was feeling antsy about Sarah. There had been no threats to her person since she had arrived on Kordea, but that, to his thinking, was not reassuring. He had worked with The Agency for years, now, and knew how persistent The Organization could be when its powers-that-be had decided on a course of action. He doubted that they had given up on the notion of trapping Sarah, and Trahea was the obvious place to try tricks; in the city she was farther from any help that the Witches could give her. Coryn had no idea what the greenhoods could do in an emergency in Trahea—no doubt there was something besides Sarah’s own partly-trained abilities—but he was not about to rely on them any more than he had to. The Organization consisted of human beings just as the Confederation did, and humans could be downed by stunners wielded by others of their kind. Bodyguards was what he wanted around Sarah, although he had to be careful to not make her feel like she was being wrapped in a cocoon. But Joe was Jill’s husband, and Texi was a local employee keen on an assignment that would take him out of the office. Sarah would accept their presence with grace, he hoped.
*****
Sarah did, sort of.
“Hey, is the City of Trahea so dangerous that I need three people with me when I go shopping?” she asked Coryn when she arrived at the Liaison Office, having linge
red at the Residence while Coryn had set off for work.
She had luxuriated in her bed for a while, then had taken a shower, and done her evening meditations, letting her mind linger over some of the latest of her lessons in the control of her PSI powers, and the use of the Stone which hung on a chain between her breasts. When she had finally dressed, in shorts and a shirt—no witchy robes for her while she was away from Ferhil Stones—there had been a breakfast waiting for her in the immaculate kitchen. Curt had waved hello as he had headed to the bathroom she was using, to clean it as thoroughly as he had done with the kitchen. Sarah had sighed as she had eaten. Living on Kordea was crazy, certainly for someone from a modest Earth background. Sometimes she missed the messes her mother had screamed at her for making; when was the last time that she had had to pick up her own clothes if she dropped them on the floor? It must have been on the space ship Camin 001, which had ferried her from the Planet of the Amartos to Kordea, and Ferhil Stones.
She sighed again, thinking back to that trip, and her stint as a ship mechanic to the Explorer ship Beth 117 before that. Really, other than for the hair-raising adventures on the Planet of the Amartos that she had gone through, in retrospect they seemed to have been good times. Coryn Leigh and Steph Clennan, had been fun companions on that last space voyage. She had not minded being Steph’s ‘kid sister’, and Coryn had been a wonderful friend, listening intently to her tales, whether about Space Station XER, space ship mechanics, or life on Earth. And he and Steph had told her stories about their early lives—apparently both of them had been deemed difficult adolescents by their respective parents, although for completely different reasons. Steph had been a space-rat of a lad, into stowing away on cargo ships, and had wanted to be a space ship pilot. He had eventually achieved that goal, becoming well respected for his considerable abilities. Coryn had been a ladies’ man from a young age, scandalizing his straight-laced father to no end. Sarah had had the feeling that he had, with some embarrassment, done some editing to his tales of those days.
Love and Intrigue Under the Seven Moons of Kordea Page 4